Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/107

 Rh century are the most ancient literary rewards still in use in any country. In the days of the Tangs also, the examinations were placed under the Board of Rites, and military examinations and medical colleges of a very primitive character were established.

For the purposes of general government each of the nineteen provinces of the empire is divided into ten, fifteen or twenty prefectures, and, according to the system now passing away, each prefectural city, or county seat, has been a headquarters for the first degree, which is called Hsiu Ts'ai, or 'Flowering Talent.' Two resident examiners in each prefecture have kept records of competing students and exercised them from time to time. A literary chancellor in each province has held office for three years and visited each prefectural city to hold bi-annual examinations for the first degree. The halls in which these tests have been held are elaborate sets of buildings, where the students could sit in long rows and write their themes on topics taken from or dealing with the string of ideas which comprise the content of Chinese education. About two thousand were accommodated at once in an average test.

The trials for the second degree, Chü Jên or 'promoted scholar,' have been held in the provincial capitals, and the vast halls arranged for this purpose provide individual stalls sometimes, as at Nanking, for thirty thousand candidates at the same time, in which the aspiring scholars had to spend three sessions of three days each endeavoring to compose victorious essays on themes relating to Chinese history, philosophy, criticism and various branches of archeology, besides trying their skill as writers of poetry. Two special examiners for each province, generally Hanlin, were deputed from Peking to conduct these great triennial examinations which were the most elaborate and characteristic of the whole system. In them, as also in the tests for the first degree, the coveted honor was bestowed on not more than one per cent, of the candidates. The unsuccessful, however, were allowed to try again indefinitely, which some did.

The third degree, denominated Chin Shih, or 'Fit for Office,' has been awarded every three years in Peking, cabinet ministers presiding. The fourth degree has also been awarded every three years at Peking, the trial taking place in the palace and all the successful candidates becoming Hanlin, or members of the 'Forest of Pencils,' an association of imperial scribes, which constitutes one of the pivots of the empire and the very center of its literary activity. Membership in this Imperial or Hanlin Academy has then been the goal of literary attainment, for this long series of contests has culminated every three years in the appointment by the emperor of a member of the academy as the model scholar of the realm.

To any one of these examinations only those were eligible who held